14 March, 2012

Say it with me, I work in a nursing home. And while I don't consider nursing homes for old people to be the same as institutions for young PWDs (there is a big difference between going into a setting like this at the end of your life, and doing so as a young person often at the cost of pursuing the things that most people your age get to pursue), I do think I am learning about institutions and why they just aren't the best thing for anyone--at least not with staff ratios that are so badly suited for people's support needs.

This is obvious, but institutions create "behaviors." They create people who are demanding or mean or angry. A person who likes to go to the bathroom frequently isn't a bad person if they can go to the bathroom independently or if they have an aide at their house whose job is to take them to the bathroom whenever they want. But if the person shares an aide with 20 other people, she becomes "the person who always wants to go the bathroom and doesn't even fucking do anything in there" because of the effect that her quite innocent and harmless personality has on an already overwhelmed aide.

And the big thing is, some people don't want to sleep at night. They want to get up. They want help getting up and going somewhere. I clearly cannot provide this help. They get mad. I start thinking to myself, "why won't they just chill out and watch TV in bed," when the person wants something totally normal that I would probably be asking for sometimes if I lived in a nursing home.

There are various ways of dealing with this situation, but recently I was introduced to the idea of pretending that someone is about to die so they can get hospice services. This means that the nearby hospital associated with us will send an aide just for that resident, to stay with them and do everything they want. I guess when you're about to die you deserve to have all your whims followed even when you have support needs, whereas other people with support needs just have to suck it up and take what help people have time to give them.

I'm not saying this is exactly a lie since we probably do have to convince people that the person could die in 6 months. But it's not like this happens to everyone who might theoretically die in 6 months, because some people don't care or wouldn't get that much out of having their own aide. It happens to people who need/want way more support than we can give them. They are the people who are suddenly like, "you guys he's about to die, he needs to be on hospice!"

This is probably not that interesting but I just thought it was kind of a funny and not very subtle way of dealing with shortcomings of institutions.

09 March, 2012

I was going to try and write about this coherently and explain the specific reasons why my disability prevents me from driving but maybe I will do that another time. For now here is a cross-post from tumblr.

hate the assumption that everyone drives

I seriously see people argue that everyone drives/has to drive. um if you couldn’t drive because you would DIE, you would learn that there are other ways of getting around, but not only do they blow, other people constantly ignore or forget that you don’t drive! while I was trying to explain this situation to the scheduling person at my work, I tried to explain that it takes me FOUR HOURS to get to and from work, and she made a little wince face. yeah, sit on the bus for four hours a day and see if all you can say about that is a little wince face.

so here’s the deal, help me out here because I feel like these kind of rules aren’t always set in stone if you actually have a good reason, but like…I’m a supercrip mongoose and there’s nothing I’m worse at than explaining I’m in extreme circumstances. I’m probably going to write a letter and then it’s going to be like “oh just talk to her why did you write a letter lol” (I actually tried to write a letter originally but I got redirected to talking and the little wince face, yeah, NOT HAPPENING AGAIN)

if you have talked to me about my job you might have gotten the impression I hate it. I actually love my job, I have the same job as Hodor. let me rephrase—I love my job WHEN I’M AT WORK.

don’t love that I get paid to work 40 hours a week, but spend 20 more hours riding the bus, for a grand total of SIXTY HOURS. don’t love being home for only 12 hours in between two work nights—go to bed! sleep! wake up! eat and veg out for an hour, feed the mysterious homeless cat, get dressed, go back to work! if you are wondering how I manage showers I would advise you not to come too close to me.

if you talk to me at night when I am about to go to work, you would never get the impression that I love my job, because I fucking hate my job when I wake up at night and I can feel my short period of freedom immediately slipping away from me. I don’t hate work but I hate that I have no fucking time.

so, I was considering asking to work 3 12-hour shifts instead of 5 8-hour shifts. I knew some other people did it and it would save me 8 hours on the bus and give me longer periods of free time. but I didn’t really get around to asking because it wasn’t a huge deal and I didn’t want to change my routine so early.

then this thing starts happening where when I walk to work at night men follow me and stuff. one time this happens when I leave work to go to walgreens at 3 am, and this time other staff notice it because the guy drives into the parking lot to look for me and then drives away when security comes out.

so that morning 2 nurses from the day shift made me go sit in a room with them and gave me a talk about DON’T LEAVE THE PREMISES AT NIGHT, which I swear to God began, “Aw, did you think you were in trouble? Don’t worry, this is for your own good.” I don’t know how much more annoying they would be if they knew I have a disability, but when people don’t consciously know I am disabled they subconsciously perceive that I am 11. in this case, an 11-year-old who’s asking for it!

but stuff also happens to me when I am just walking to work, from the bus, when I have no choice! staff have also concern-trolled when they see me walking to work from the bus stop. “THIS ISN’T A SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD.” oh yeah you think?

anyway after the adventure with the guy in the parking lot, I’ve finally decided fuck this I want to start working 3 12-hour shifts and getting to work WHEN IT IS STILL LIGHT OUT PLEASE.

so…then they told me that only people who work on the independent living floor can have 12-hour shifts and people who work in LTC can only have 8-hour shifts. even though aides who technically work on the independent living floor get assigned to work in LTC all the time. that’s how I met so many people who have 12-hour shifts! so it’s clearly like, a policy/way of doing things and not the way things have to be.

God help me, the first thing I said was, “Oh, well can I work 16-hour shifts then?” and she was like “I’ll get back to you about that next week” and…yeah, fuck me, I would do it if they let me, but I’m still worried.

I was obviously totally unsuccessful at pulling at the heartstrings and explaining how extreme this situation is. I’m not crazy, right? this isn’t just me whimsically asking to work 12-hour shifts because I like the number 12. but…there I was bleating, “but my bus ride is 4 hours” and not hitting on the important ideas like, “MEN FOLLOWING ME IN CARS.”

so I’m probably going to write a letter, but yeah, advice is appreciated because the current form of the letter is pretty angry.

05 March, 2012

(The story in this post might be upsetting to some people because it involves trying to pressure someone into taking medication and judging them for not taking it.)

I feel like I shouldn't be posting right now because I should be sleeping and I'll be tired on the way to work, but I feel like I use the excuse of sleeping to avoid almost everything, like church, and I barely sleep anyway so here I go.

"They say an unhappy man wants distractions--something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one."--CS Lewis, A Grief Observed

When we were freshmen Clayton and I had a friend, let's call her Annie. I don't know how much of this is 100% accurate but I don't think Annie reads this blog, so it's probably all right to just tell you how I remember it. Annie identified herself in conversations as someone who had a mental illness and sometimes hurt herself, and one day she casually told me that she probably should be on medication because she was at an age when the way her brain was was being solidified and if she didn't go on medication right now, she would always have problems. She told me this like it was funny and she didn't particularly care to do anything about it.

Clayton and I both have savior complexes and we made it a project to try and get Annie to go to student counseling. Never mind that he would later realize how fucked up he had gotten from the medication student counseling put him on, or that I've been virulently anti-medication of any kind since I was 16, to the extent that I would rather throw up from pain than take an Advil. For whatever reason we decided that we were right and Annie was wrong and we had to get her to go to counseling.

It was almost summer; Annie wanted to be outside when it was sunny so she could skateboard and hang out with her friends. Every day the two of us would descend on her and try to get her to go to counseling and she would say that she didn't want to go until it was dark. Student counseling closed at five in the evening so this was the same as saying she could never go. I remember how ridiculous and reckless Clayton and I thought she was, and how much we annoyed her.

Annie and I grew apart over the next three years but she is someone I admire a lot because she's so smart and interested in so many things. Sometimes it seems like she just has to think of something she'd like, and all the resources appear to make it happen. I found her hard to be friends with because she moved so fast--she would suggest doing something, I'd resist it because it went against my schedule, and by the time I started realizing I would like to do it she would already have left to begin it.

The point is though that a year or two ago I started really understanding how I could see Annie's decision as smart, not stupid. It got me through the last year and a half of college, trying to think that way--blinding myself to the big picture, trying to unfocus my eyes and look at seconds and colors. I couldn't do things right and I couldn't feel good a lot of the time so I stopped trying. I didn't fail. When I saw something in front of me that might make me feel good, I took it.

So for a long time I've been on that kind of track and I've realized how hard it is for someone outside to see why you don't listen to "reason." Why you'd rather ride in a car than worry about your problems taking care of yourself. Why you'd rather have fun smoking than figure out if you will let yourself live long enough to die of lung cancer. Why instead of constantly apologizing to yourself and everyone for not being more organized, you're making Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in a huge pot and watching YouTube videos with your roommate.

The thing I feel most clearly now is that it was none of my business what Annie did with her time. I'm not as clear on the rest of it--how being like Annie applies to me and how I should feel about it.

I found myself talking about Annie today. I was trying to argue why it's okay for me to be involved with men even though I am gay. I'm probably going to get upset writing about this because the conversation turned to an end that felt more permanent than usual. I know I was convincing him at the beginning. At some point it wasn't working anymore for me to say "we should live in the moment" and "I don't expect to ever have a family or a relationship with a woman, so we might as well try and feel as good as we can."

And I remembered, a few years ago I would have thought being with a guy was like throwing something in God's face, being too lazy and desperate for comfort to feel anything but the shadows of what I could feel. I would have thought it was the real thing or nothing, and even now it's hurting me to type that it's not the real thing, because I want it to be as good as the real thing when it's with a guy, but it's not and that's not my fault. And the boy wasn't hurt, he's the strangest, nicest boy--he was relieved.

The truth is it's very hard for me to work especially not being a driver, and it's really hard for me to live on my own, and the only people I talk to outside of work are men who try and bother me. Giving up smoking is a serious sacrifice not because of nicotine as much as the fact that I lose a reason people will talk to me. I'm really sad right now. Sorry if this is too much information, but I've been going back and forth on the Annie thing for such a long time, and I wanted to write about it. Not Annie herself because obviously she shouldn't have been on meds when she didn't want to be, but thinking about endgames vs. staying in the sunlight whenever I can.

The thing is I don't know if I ever felt so much this way since I was on meds myself in tenth grade. Every day I'd take stimulants and spend a few hours thinking everything was really special and important, not realizing how much I didn't notice or how fucked up everything had gotten. As the day went on I got sadder and sadder and the only thing that mattered to me was--guess what--the person I was dating, who I wasn't actually attracted to.

Towards the end of the drugs, in some sobbing state, I told my mom I wasn't happy. My mom saw me all amped and buzzed up on the way to school every morning after I downed my Wellbutrin and Adderall. She said, "But I see you happy every day."

I said, "but I'm not a happy person."

I built myself back up through the two depressing but somehow joyful last years of high school. I was a very sad but happy person by the time I turned eighteen. I'm not sure how lazy and distracted I must have gotten, to get so far off track--because yeah I have to look at the small things, but this has gotten small enough to seep into all of them.

PICTURE NOTE: as a lot of us probably know, Photobucket has recently stopped allowing people to hotlink images. For the first few years I was using this blog, I used Photobucket to host most of the images, so now they will not be visible! Until Photobucket goes under, as I imagine it will, you can at least see the images by opening them in a new tab.